Trump is right about mail-in ballot doubts

“Hundreds of thousands of applications for mail-in ballots that a voteradvocacy group sent to voters in Virginia had the wrong return addresses, adding another complication for state election officials who are already hard-pressed to pull off a smooth election in a pandemic.”

In Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative election integrity watchdog firm, reports, according to the Western Journal, “universal mail-in balloting resulted in one out of every six ballots being ‘undeliverable' in a recent primary over 223,000 ballots bounced because the addresses were incorrect or outdated.”

“CBS This Morning” ran a small test on mail-in ballots. The program set up a P.O. Box and sent 100 mock ballots to it. A few days later the show sent 100 more. Only 97% of the first batch arrived after a week and 21% of the second batch had not arrived after four days.

The show stated the obvious that in close elections such incidents could make a difference.

Then there is the possibility of fraud. During the 2018 election campaign, The New York Post reported, “Homeless people on Los Angeles' Skid Row were bribed with cash or cigarettes in exchange for bogus and forged signatures in a ‘large-scale voter fraud scheme,'” according to state prosecutors.

There are many other examples of voting problems in several states. Republicans are mostly opposed to universal vote-by-mail. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., claims the process invites fraud and cite over a thousand voter fraud convictions and a study showing that 28 million mail-in ballots are unaccounted for over the last decade.

For these reasons mail-in balloting should be limited and thoroughly checked. Voters can practice all the things medical experts tell us to do and vote in person. It is a civic duty and a privilege. It will also help reduce errors and fraud and improve the credibility and acceptance of the results.